A more complex but almost as dispiriting tale comes from Ted Hope, an indie producer of legend who helped make many of the films of Hal Hartley, The Ice Storm<\/em>, Happiness<\/em>, Todd Haynes’s Safe<\/em>, and much more. It’ a kind of roller coaster reading this excerpt<\/a> from Hope’s new book on Soft Skull, Hope For Film<\/em><\/a> Again and again, his basic optimism and urge to innovate get overcome by events. Generally, his ambition was to make films with “midsized budgets\u2014low enough that you could take\u00a0creative risks, but high enough that you could compete at the Academy Awards if you delivered\u00a0the goods.”<\/p>\n At one point, he writes:<\/p>\n Even as I watched my\u00a0income drop over a four- to five-year period, I didn\u2019t think I needed to do a complete 180-degree And the recession was not as temporary as he’d expected:<\/p>\n The downturn lasted more than three years. And the indie world wasn\u2019t\u00a0changing for the better; it actually got harder to finance or sell those films. And yet, it was\u00a0becoming easier, at least on a technical level, to make interesting movies on increasingly smaller\u00a0budgets.The optimist in me believed that both the indie-film culture and the indie business would bounce\u00a0back, that this was just a blip caused by the economic crisis and that people (and the industry)\u00a0would again hunger for quality tales told well. So I set myself a three-year goal of trying to make\u00a0five films, regardless of budget, provided at least two had a budget of at least three million\u00a0dollars so that I could earn enough to support myself and an assistant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of the the things I like about Hope’s assessment is the way he looks — to use the metaphor I started this discussion with — at the larger ecology, in this case the sustenance provided by journalistic criticism. Here is he again:<\/p>\n People trust the people they\u2019re\u00a0closest to.That\u2019s the great crime in the firing of so many film critics in America over the last few\u00a0years. Local audiences trusted those local critics; after years of engagement, the critics had\u00a0developed a relationship with their audience, which came to know when to take something with a\u00a0grain of salt and when to follow their advice like a close friend. Those critics may blog, but\u00a0blogging does not have the same authority as when they were the voice of their local community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Hope-For-Film_cover_1\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Hope-For-Film_cover_1.jpg\")
<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nshift. I was still getting good movies made, although there was no denying they were being seen\u00a0less, having less impact, and were less satisfying, as a result. I was also starting to feel that I\u00a0wasn\u2019t being realistic about the changes that were coming to the industry. Or perhaps how these\u00a0changes had already arrived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n